Long before Pune became the mini metro it is today, it was the town of three cantonments, a river — Sangam — an army command, few dozen colleges, Parsis and Bohris. While growing up in this town, one had to declare allegiance to one of the two distinct factions on either side of the Sangam — the old conservative Pune with its customs and traditions and the liberal Cantonment ‘Poona’, swinging to the sounds of Jazz at the Jaws Burger Café or the Regatta along the Bund Garden or The Osho Rajneesh Ashram with its free spirit, love and… grass! This is the part that I belonged to — the profuse, rocking Poona of the 70s, 80s and nineties, before moving to that concrete jungle called Mumbai.

The Lal Deval

My father, communist, trade unionist and closet-rum-drinker ensured that his kids — my sister and I — were “always” a part of the “hipness” of the Cantonment area. So when the rest of the Malayali kids went to schools that were within walking distance, we went by bus to a school 18 Kms away in the heart of the Cantonment, right next to a Synagogue, funnily called The Lal Deval (The Red Temple).

My classmates were mostly, completely insane (in a nice way) Parsis, the comical (again, in a nice way) Bohris, a few radical (in a funny way – at least that’s what I thought) Christians and the likes. Being in the midst of this motley crowd, always an ‘outsider’, had its benefits — I was privy to their hallowed rituals and most importantly their food, replete with ‘soul’.

After 11 years, I went back to the now-called- Pune, to walk down memory lane. Was it guilt or was it nostalgia or was it both? I don’t know, but I was compelled to go back to the old ‘haunts’ and experience the ‘soul food’ again.

Biryani that needs to be eaten with hands - Indian style!

The jaunt began with Blue Nile. It had to! Housed in a 180-year-old building and spread over two floors, it stands as it always had been, right opposite The Poona Club on Bund Garden Road. Blue Nile seemed to be in a time warp. The ground floor still served“bachelors” and the first floor hall was for “Family” — back then, to enter the hallowed portals of the ‘family room’ all you needed was a willing female companion old enough to vote. I am glad, nothing has changed.

The Blue Nile is run by Persians or Iranis who migrated to Poona some 60 years ago and stayed back serving Persian Biryani and Kebabs. They do serve the normal biryani too. But, why would you want ‘normal’ when you can get the ‘Persian’ — made out of chicken stock flavoured rice, speckled with saffron and a large piece of fried chicken served with a roasted tomato and a slab of butter. It has to be eaten with your hands — the Indian style. That Rs.250 biryani nourishes the soul, worth every rupee.

If you are a foodie like me, you’d still have enough space in your tummy for Blue Nile’s other special —Tandoori Murg.Finish it all off in style — with an ice cream Falooda. All for Rs.180/But then as they say, there are few things in this world money can’t buy — like the experience of going back in time and having your heart wrapped in this warm sepia-toned feeling that makes you think — all is well with the world. My soul sings a similar tune at the Britannia Café in Mumbai — but that’s for another day.

The next day, I headed to Marz-O-Rin. Founded by Sheriar J. Sheriyarji in 1965 with only four items on the menu — chutney and chicken sandwiches, cheese burger and chicken roll. All the items had something to with fresh slices of bread and basic fillings.

Long before quick serve restaurants or drive-in eateries came into existence, Sheriyaji established a counter in the heart of Main Street ( MG Road) that served sandwiches, rolls, juices and milk shakes.Their motto was simple — you want to eat, get in line. If you complained, they’d throw you out. My face stretched into a smiley when I learnt that they still threw out the whiners, and yes, there was still a winding queue waiting to eat those sandwiches. The folks behind the counter were the same people who used to scold us boys when we took our pimply girlfriends from St.Mary’s School for a sandwich and some hand-holding. The men still don’t crack a smile; they still wear that attitude that screams ‘We do not need you, you need us.’Sigh! And they are right!

Because Marz-O-Rin is the place where you will find shimmery white butter melting into the warm folds of fresh bread, which then wraps itself around minced chicken and mustard — it’s a symphony that your palate will remember till your are called to the Pearly Gates. Go early, find a place in the balcony of the Bhaktiar Building and I promise you… you will find ‘home’.

While you are there, try their almond macaroons, bite into the coconut ones or the very gooey dark forest cake slice. Then wash it down with cold rose milk or coffee or Bournvita.Back in the day, they used to have glass bottles of nimboo paani (Lemon water) with a foil cap, which we would punch with a straw...I believe, I still haven't tasted anything as good as that lemon water.

As I walked out of the place, all I could think of was: how the hell did the chutney in the sandwich and the cheese burger taste the same after all these years — flavourful green chillies without the heat. Time, at Marz-O-Rin, stands still; it sucks you into its wondrous time machine. And I am a willing time-traveller.

King Burger Outlet

On my third and last day at ‘down memory lane’ I went for grunge — grimy, sooty rickety King Burger outlet. It is at the end of East Street and if you have weak innards or paranoid about germs-taking-over-the-world then this is not for you. But you should know, this is where they serve a ‘mean’ burger — mammoth chicken / mutton mince patty with just the right amount of onion and a sauce that is an audacious mix of mayo and ketchup. It’s comfort food.

Quirky! That's what make this place special

By the way, know beforehand, that at King Burger they will not cut the giant burger into two, but will happily let you share the whopper. Yeah, they are quirky that way. But is what makes special. It will take time to finish the burger so, settle down, stretch your legs, enjoy a young Dylan and Elvis on the wall, relax and soak in the world...then...bite into your burger. It won’t be a pretty sight, but it will surely be gastrorgasmic — charred caramalized bits of meat, buns soaked in the mayo-ketchup mix with the bite of crunchy onions — if you were allowed to bite into heaven, it might taste like King’s burger. And trust me, it lasts 24 hours in the system. Wash it down with a Duke’s Lemonade or Fram’s Raspberry or Ginger. Fram’s is short for Framjee — an antiquated cold drink manufacturer, indigenous to Pune. Do carry antacids as a precautionary measure.

Don’t forget to shoo the flies away. Look out of the windows and immerse yourself in the rich banter of college kids pooling resources, the sweet nothings of the last bite that the guy insists the girl must have — I was transported to twenty years ago when raging hunger would see a bunch of 20-year-old boys and that rare girl on the spare seat of the Kawasaki RTZ, find burgers that were close to what Pop Tate’s served to those kids in Archie’s Comics. Macs and KFC were still in the future. But for those few hours, we were all Americans in Pune Cantonment.

Ganna Jus

Once I was done at King’s Burger, I had one last stop to make — Ganna Jus, one of the many roadside stalls that sells a tall glass of fresh sugarcane juice with a dash of lime and a bite of ginger. It’s the drink that will seal your memory, in more ways than one.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

News that Google is buying Nest has come with the usual analysis and postmortems. Let us face it, Google is no longer a search / media company. They are slowly getting into the space of creating an OS that will keep us engaged with the space around us. Roy Tennant of DigitalShift says eloquently that "I have a variety of opinions on the topic, but one seems inescapable. Google already knows so much about us. Having lured us into sharing our deepest secrets through free services like Google Search, GMail, Drive (formerly Google Docs), and many others, they inevitably want more." That 'more' is what Nest would provide, that more will come in the form of Internet of Things Architecture (IoTA) that I bet Google will go after very soon.

So here are a few predictions:

1. Google will buy more wearable technology companies to complete the Google Glass ecosystem. All those in India wanting some bit of sunshine - here is what you must do - go after creating apps for the Glass ecosystem, go after creating solutions that will enable Google to track everything about its users. Let us assume that Google will not be evil about the data and go get some money into the bank.

2. This year - 2014 will be the year of the Internet of Things. So get ready to have all kinds of things talking to all kinds of things, exchanging information and providing real time responses. Google Now was just the tip. wait for the Tsunami to hit.

3. Android will move / Has moved beyond the 3 screens it was originally planned for. It will be the life juice behind the cars, behind the Thermostats, The AC, The Fitbit, The med equipments, The sugar monitors. Providing Google with minute details that go beyond location, content and context. Imagine what it can do for advertisers with this kind of data, imagine what it can serve up easily on each one of us.

This is going to be exciting. And scary. When did they say Skynet went sentient?

Monday, January 6, 2014

Last Saturday's issue of Mint Lounge is luscious. It lists a whole lot of things that an urban Indian can do for the first time. These were outlandish one like walking across Outer Mongolia or sipping coffee with the pygmies of Amazon (do they even exist), most of them were real things that could be done if one had the spine or the will to do so. The more I read the issue over the weekend, the more I felt that I had done a lot of firsts in 2013. So here is my list of firsts:

1. MOOCs - I discovered Coursera and online education for the first time. And in one burst over 6 months attempted 8 courses ranging from Gamification to Design Thinking. I managed to get certified in 6 and dropped out of 2. Not bad for someone who struggled through college. It was an amazing experience to find time to schedule 3 hours daily to watch lectures, take notes, prepare essays and submissions and give a test every week. If I had any doubts about my ability to discipline my unruly ways, this was it. And found many many enlightened educators and people who I would have missed out completely if I had not attempted my first education after getting educated. And even if they think that MOOCs are a big mistake, I think that this is foundation for education for everyone.

2. A wedding in November made me go out of my comfort zone and got me to not act my age for the first time this year. I dressed up as Quick Gun Murugan - the sambhar sipping cowboy from South India. Between the time that I said ok to the idea and actually doing it, my friends bet 10000 bucks - (#@$$#@$s). I had to go to a smelly costume shop in Lokhandwala, brave the looks of Estonian long legged girls who dance in Hindi movies and a reality show participant to select the awesome costume that Nawaz put together for me. Yes it was worth it. Yes it made people in Versova's Kino's Cottage stand up and stare at me and yes I confess. I completely enjoyed it!

3. I hate fish! Even when it is scaled, gutted and deodorized, I cannot stand the sight. When the family goes to Gajalee - the famous for fish restaurant for their monthly quota of Bombay Duck and Tisrya - that's clams for the illiterates, I sulk. Last year I got over my hatred for fish and cooked with it, just to make my daughter happy. She insisted after seeing Jamie Oliver cook fish on a food show that I cook for her the exact replica. And that meant that whatever I cooked, I had to eat, else the little lady would sulk. This year I have to find a decent octupus and a very tame squid - all in the name of being a good father.

4. I rode a donkey! No pictures exist of this spectacular adventure. My partner in crime - my daughter asked if she could ride a donkey - these donkeys were part of a caravan of nomads on the way to Chikmagalur. She would not ride unless I did - so we did. The donkeys were friendly guys, smelly but timid, docile creatures. After around a kilometer of riding them I promised never to call anyone a donkey ever. Respect!

5. Picked, sorted, roasted and ground my own mix of Chikmagalur coffee. It is something I recommend every coffee addict must do atleast once in their lifetime. And immediately brew the coffee fresh out of the grinder. The liquor sings, you hear notes that you never knew existed. I found hints of orange, cranberry and pepper - all from the plantation where the coffee beans grew. The terroir of the place gets embedded into the flavour of the coffee. You have to close your eyes to listen.

6. Worked on an area that I do not understand - Gaming and helped build a amazing portfolio of cross platform solutions for the next quantum leap in Gaming in India. You will hear more about it in 2014.

And now for the list of possible firsts of 2014:

1. Run a marathon by December - maybe a quarter marathon but do something about running

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

I have been taking a MOOC course called Understanding Media by Understanding Google by Prof. Owen R. Youngman on Coursera for the last 6 weeks and the last assignment was about privacy - a debate on whether our decreasing anonymity online, and the increases in data collection and information sharing that accompany this decrease, either improves or damages 21st-century life. Part of the course work is a peer assessment which we need to complete and I ended up listing how many of the students were ok with the decreasing anonymity online.

Around 90% of the students ( the sample size is too small at 10 students, hence I cannot say whether this is a trend) whose assignments I graded and a few people I interacted with on Twitter seem to say that they are not very concerned about the lack of privacy due to mega structures like Google and Facebook keeping tabs on them and sharing their information with governments.

I have to agree with thinker and author of What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis who blogs at BuzzMachine when he says that it is impossible for us to hide ourselves from the eyes of who ever wants to study us. We cannot want the benefits of a cell phone network and then grumble that the operator knows where we are at any given time. The more data gets collected the better is the understanding of society and the world around us.

In times of disaster the data collected can help governments keep tabs on the affected citizens. Disasters like the recent Phailin cyclone and the London riots have shown that responsible use of the information can be useful. Had there been some form of a ruling that disallowed the government from tracking there whereabouts of these potential victims, the toll would have been higher.

Data emerging out of our conversations on Twitter, Facebook and Google can help a greater goal of providing better healthcare, prevent riots and squash rumours in times of strife. One of the comments in the Jeff Jarvis debate on The Economist [1] asks "Does society benefit from people sharing personal information online? To me, the answer is a highly qualified "yes". Yes it allows like minded people to share information and experience that would not otherwise have been exchanged."

Google already knows enough about me, it has had me by the scruff of my neck since they went live with their search engine. Airtel probably has all my text messages and a copy of all my calls, HDFC Bank and Amex knows exactly how much I earn and what I spend on. I have to swipe to access the various buildings and levels at work and every toll booth I cross already takes a grab of my car number plates and my face. There are cameras recording the 24 kms I drive to and fro to work. There are cameras inside the lobby of my building, the lift and the mall. I get calls from 27 agents the moment I am 30 days away from renewing my car insurance. I do not think anyone can function without being tracked. Then why are we so worried about privacy?

All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret, says Gabriel Garcí¬a Márquez [2] . My opinion is that what is secret, our deepest darkest stories must be protected and if anyone has these in their lives they must ensure that it is not published on the net or on some social media. However the private part of our lives enhanced by the digital crumbs be leave behind can eventually help us in ways that probably have not yet been discovered.

If in the near future the Internet of Things becomes a significant reality then imagine how enriched our lives can be. And at that point would we be getting fidgety about lack of privacy?

In conclusion can just think of a new jargon I came across in one of the assignments - 'Privacy Currency' - the valuable we give away to get services for free. Think about it.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Once upon a time in Mumbai lived a 7 year old girl called Tarakshi. She lived in a small apartment on the third floor of a building close to the beach. Her bedroom window opened to the lush green of a tamarind tree full of crows. One day while she was playing with her friends in the narrow space between the building and the moss covered compound wall she spied upon a small frail baby crow who has fallen off from his nest in the Tamarind tree. The baby crow was hurt badly. Tarakshi took him home and then she made her mother take the crow to a veterinarian. That night she kept him warm and cuddled in a shoe box under her bed and soon he was hopping around the flat behind her. She named him Kaa. He was a smart crow - and liked to sleep on the bed post right above Tarakshi's head every night with his beak tucked into his right wing. In the morning he would wake Tarakshi up with loud kaaa kaaa and flutter around Tarakshi's head all the while till she went off to school in her big yellow bus. He would be there waiting for her perched on the topmost branch of the tamarind tree when she returned from school. He made friends with the people who lived in the tamarind tree - the squirrels names Sniffy and Hoppy, the ant family - Bunty, Mungi and their daughter Chinti, Kooie the koel and Mignon the sparrow who had four daughters - Crystal, ChiChi, Tara and Maana. He also taught Tarakshi the language of these animal people. And what fun they had!

The story above is the template that I have used for the last 5 and 1/2 years to keep my (now 7.5 years) daughter entertained. Every night at bed time she would hear me narrate an adventure. To begin with the stories were simple - about brushing the teeth every morning and night and eating healthy fruits and picking up things after play time and so on. Eventually as she grew up Tarakshi became a role model. Tamara, my daughter would do things only if Tarakshi did the same in a story. Tarakshi has grown up too. She is now almost 11 and has a cat called Kylie who used to belong to a witch queen and a dog called Tipsy - she and Kaa found him running behind cars on the road near Tarakshi's building.

I have wanted to create a blog for parents of little boys and girls to help them navigate through the years 2 to 10 when the kids we have hopefully listen to us and are fascinated with their fathers and their mothers. Afterall what we give them in those 8 years defines what they will be when they are older. The 20-30 minutes everyday I spend with my daughter are the best relaxant that anyone can prescribe. The wide eyed wonder in the initial years has given way to questions about morals and rights and wrongs. It has helped make me a better man - taught me patience and discipline to be able to think up imaginative stories. I have had to wake up sometimes to her requests on a Sunday morning of wanting me to tell her that story about Ribbit the frog and how he sailed a paper boat to rescue a dragon fly who did not listen to his friends and went far away into the trees to play with the evil grasshoppers! Its been worth the effort. It has been an investment which I hope will be far more rewarding than letting Barbie stories and Shinchan hours be imposed on kids just to keep them out of the way.

I have often wondered if this series of stories could be turned into an illustrated set of books. I have day dreamed that one day there would be t-shirts and compass boxes with little anecdotes of the two. I even went to the extent of trying to convince myself that someday the creators of Chota Bheem ( ugh!) would hunt me down and buy the rights to the series and make me rich within the next quarter.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

I choose to think that if someone instinctively and repeatedly picks up a mobile device to consume media while engaged in another activity, then the person is not engaged or immersed in the first activity completely due to either boredom or due to lack of stimulation. We see this behavior happening all the time - recently I attended the performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the legendary Prithvi Theater in Mumbai, India. This theater is very strict when it comes to the audience using the mobile phone within the auditorium and the ushers are known to vocally point out people and throw them out. Even at the cost of being caught, there were at least half a dozen grownups who constants checked their phones. One of these was seated next to me and ended up asking what he missed when the audience roared with laughter. So much for the good old bard and his art and nuanced performance of the actors on stage. It is not engagement, it is being distracted.

We are bored because we are used to this constant attention that the phone provides. We get fidgety and jittery when we do not have a notification or a message or an email that beckons us to leave what we do and escape to that red blinking LED. The syndrome is similar to that experienced by people addicted to a drug - the withdrawal symptoms which includes physical and mental stress. Maybe it is because we want acceptance from our peers and want to not lose out on the whirlwind of news and events going on around us.

A few of us might use the excuse that we are trying to be engaged with the event happening in front of us. I cannot justify what engagement would take place if you are tweeting whats going on on screen or updating a status message, and very quickly thereafter keep checking for responses while the nuance, the flavor and the essence of the event occurring at that moment is lost to us. Instead of deeping the engagement it creates a layer of technology interference. I have often spoken of the second screen being as important as the first, one assumes that the people using the second screen are not using it while the main act is being missed on the main screen. It would be downright stupid.

Overwhelmed by the volume and velocity of our lives, we turn to technology to help us find time. But technology makes us busier than ever and ever more in search of retreat. Gradually, we come to see our online life as life itself. We come to see what robots offer as relationship. The simplification of relationship is no longer a source of complaint. It becomes what we want. These seem the gathering clouds of a perfect storm.

We are beginning to behave like Pavlov's dogs - we need attention and the phone seems to provide it in easily doses, and we say we are bored.I hear from friends and coworkers that their kids spend a lot of time using the tablets and mobile phones, that these 7/8 year olds are experts in using these devices. My question to them usually is whether their kids read a 20 page book with pictures at a stretch or can they listen to a story narration without getting distracted? I get weird looks. And therein lies the problem, we are so distracted that it is the normal for us and hence it is the normal for our children. Unfortunate that the next generation would not know what it is to lie under a banyan tree and watch the clouds go by and not have the compulsion to let the world know that they saw a dragon and a rabbit being chased by a mouse in the sky.Further reading:The crisis of Attention mentioned by Joe Kraus in "Slow Tech"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzpX0TLKS9Q which in the initial minutes illustrates how distracted we really are due to the mobile phones which are constantly buzzing and not letting us complete any one thing in its entirety.

Friday, October 11, 2013

I started blogging again almost 2 months ago and the first blog post after that long break was about rejection. A different kind of rejection happened a couple of days later - a bank rejected my application for a home loan (was mad enough to want to invest in one more property, logic was that one needs a property for every year post retirement, and considering I aim to be around for a long long time, I figured one more would do no harm).

I have been rejected before by banks and credit card companies for a lot of reasons - I used to work for a company call nautanki.tv (Citibank rejected me for this reason), had a bad credit history because my EMI cheques would regularly bounce - I had salaries to pay and any insane individual running a startup would understand this. After retiring from the business of startups, I paid back every rupee I ever borrowed and cleaned up my track record and eventually managed to get a car loan, home loan and a couple of credit cards (part of it was due to my employers and that in itself is another story).

The latest rejection was because the bank found that once upon a time I had taken a loan and had missed a few EMIs. I had repaid them with interest but the stain remained. In their view I am no less than a criminal with blood on my hands. I tweeted about it and got a response from Aparna Ramchandra who runs Rectifycredit.com - the business is simple, her team works with the credit rating firms like CIBIL and the banks and helps people like me or worse in getting their credit history cleaned up so that they do not get rejected by banks. I found the idea simple and am happy to say that the service is efficient and effective. I was curious to know how they function, their funding and the scale and called Aparna to chat. What I realised after talking to her is what a lot of us who have been in the startup have started to talk about - does it make sense to give away a huge chunk of your company to get money from angels who are not really interested in your business but are looking at a ROI of 16 - 17% on their investment. She says that it puts unrealistic pressure on the business and takes away the core ideas. RectifyCredit wants to expand, wants to go to new cities and wants to put humans in those offices to have a voice to deal with people who are already scared of the banking and financial sector. She wants to put the trust factor into the business and grow steady.

Another service that I have come to love is OKListen.com. If you are someone who is tired of the Bollywood noise masquerading as music then you must try the service out. It provides a platform for independent music to reach their audience. Currently available via the browser, one can buy jazz albums by artists who would never be found otherwise. They have some of the brightest artists on their service today and do a sizable volume of downloads per month. I met Vijay Basrur, the CEO and Founder of the service over]coffee - he had the exact same thing to say about funding - do not want to give away equity for just some money.

These are two very small but robust ideas in my opinion and can be grown into large businesses if the inputs are correct. Simple things like connections to people who can help. Relationships that can be leveraged to benefit and possibly a small bit of cash to get to the next level.

I wonder why most angels and angel networks in India have gone the way a VC firm would work. Wonder why no one is willing to invest in a startup that needs sub 1 crore in funding and why do the ones that can fund want so much of equity that the founders do not have the incentive to work beyond the first couple of rounds.

Would a platform that interfaces and performs the role of a mentor work? Would it be possible to pool in resources of the startups and businesses that have crossed the threshold of death so that a pipeline of startups take root? I am not talking of accelerators and combinators and such, am talking even more basic - more grounded setup that provides synergy to the startups. I have a whiff of an idea here but I am not sure yet where it would go from here.

Do you have ideas that can help these two startups that I have mentioned. Write in and I would be happy to share their contacts or just go and look up their websites.